


Glitch in the System: Words & Other Things

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, ok it's not that vague, vague allusions to face sitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 05:28:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12269829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: By K.Widowmaker does some emotional navelgazing on their time at the château.





	Glitch in the System: Words & Other Things

Château Guillard came to represent a marked shift in the rapport Widowmaker and Sombra cobbled together from rare honesties hidden among the otherwise dishonest world in which they lived. That gradual transition - from their initial, reluctant interactions to accidental fleeting touches to the now-effortless embraces which punctuated their work about the estate - still left the sniper at an occasional loss. In those moments, pawing uselessly through the programmatic fog which hindered her access to words which might best offer clarity to both herself and Sombra, Widowmaker was more grateful than ever for their easy silences and the wordless languages they leveraged therein. **  
**

It wasn’t that she desired them more or preferred them over their conversations, especially as expression came to her more readily than ever - which was to say at all, and fleetingly. Still, that progress was undeniable: from basic needs to idle desires to hunger of a more carnal sort, there were a precious handful of words occupying the vacant spaces in her vocabulary she hadn’t known existed. Where those failed, Sombra showed her remarkable patience - especially for, well, Sombra - allowing her the berth necessary to piece together rudimentary translations of her short-lived emotions and the physiological reactions they provoked. Though inelegant and stilted, they were better than nothing, and Widowmaker was thankful for them.

Of course, that progress was not without its own drawbacks. Each push forward made her rare crossings with grief more oppressive than ever before, their unpredictable and sudden force often leaving the famously stoic assassin sobbing into the embrace from Sombra that came both unbidden and unconditionally. Widowmaker couldn’t say whether it helped in the moment, especially as those fractious minutes stretched into an hour, sometimes two, but that Sombra was there without so much as a question made the instances where Talon’s neural framework proved more permeable than intended somehow easier to recover from. Each action, small on its own, spoke volumes in its unique context, and Widowmaker marveled at how much they could say with something as simple as a kiss.

In the morning, Sombra kissed her softly, equal parts “good morning” and “I’m here”. Some days, it was a single gesture, short and sweet to express the simple happiness borne of the spider’s presence; others, a repeated affirmation Widowmaker was not alone despite the barriers Talon’s protocols reenforced upon her waking. Regardless of whether these moments were singular or incremental, they were always gentle, slowed by the heavy cling of sleep. Widowmaker quietly favored these for how naturally and instinctively they occurred, and relished as much as she was able in reciprocating them.

From time to time, those lazy morning kisses became something else entirely as she transmuted the insufficiencies of “thank you” into a closeness that served as a far better testament to her gratitude: the hungry parting of Sombra’s lips, the grazing of teeth along her collarbone or ear, the press of nails against the hacker’s waist as she ground her hips against her tongue. Those unhurried and unspoken expressions were unique in their ardency, and within them Widowmaker could almost feel the faintest note of sorrow, applying it to the firmness of her touch or the way she refused any space between them. Sombra met that sadness with surprising grace, offering smaller comforts in the form of interlaced fingers or featherlight kisses along the hollow of her throat.

Occasionally, their mornings in bed persisted well into the afternoon; the château was good for that, Sombra smirked one day as she pushed through the bedroom doors with one teeth-marked hip, mugs of coffee in either hand.

“A girl could get used to this,” she added, meeting Widowmaker at the edge of the bed where she exchanged a single kiss for the drink offered her. Sombra, of course, accepted with interest.

“I will miss it,” the sniper replied.

“It’s your house, spider.”

Widowmaker laughed under her breath, somewhere between bemused and dangerously close to bitter. “Not here; this,” she explained with a vague wave gesture between the two of them. “It’s funny; I hated all this free time at first, but you made it less…  _sais pas_ , oppressive.”

“We can make time,  _araña_ ,” the hacker offered, perching lightly at her side.

“I think I would like that.”

For the most part, they devoted the better part of their afternoons to the mansion: laying drop cloths, painting, moving furniture, hanging artwork, basic cleaning. Sometimes, they worked uninterrupted, breaking only for meals or to debate whose choice in music would accompany their tasks - Sombra preferring thrumming electronica while Widowmaker favored an eclectic mix of singer-songwriters the hacker dismissed instantaneously as “mushy”. The times devoted exclusively to the manor were far fewer than those where the most effortless interactions - Sombra’s teasing, Widowmaker’s coy detachment - gave way to an impatient hunger that often saw Sombra shoved against a cold, stone wall or face-first against the dining table. The only word she needed then was Widowmaker’s name, ragged and broken between her teeth as the sniper curled a fist in her hair with one hand and pressed a finger, then two into her with the other. Widowmaker’s oft-unwavering patience was starkly absent then, replaced by urgency and a forceful rhythm Sombra met eagerly with the pitching of her hips. That lust spoke more for the both of them than they ever could, its manifestation a discourse of “want” and “please”.

Every so often, a particular detail - a memento presumed lost to time, the precise angle of the sun through certain windows, a specific vintage of wine, or a an heirloom tucked away somewhere clearly intended as secret - would reduce their afternoons and evenings to a very different sort of silence, heavy and impenetrable. Sombra could see it coming from miles away as Widowmaker handled a specific note or painting with a delicacy better reserved for fine china, what little light lingering behind her eyes fading into a flat, dead void better and more frequently suited to their work in the field than a photograph.

Widowmaker felt tight then; sometimes exhausted, sometimes restless, and, worse, sometimes both. It reeked of the crushing weight that dogged her as she laid the details of her own reprogramming across the surface of her bed; the same muted but unignorably extant pang of agonizing  _something_  that she carried on the flight from Milan to Venice just two weeks ago. How that discomfort would manifest remained embarrassingly unpredictable, from quiet tears to fitful sobbing that left her mortified and gasping for breath. When possible, she would retire silently to one of the estate’s numerous balconies, concerned those vulnerabilities would, in abundance, come to constitute an unwelcome burden on the hacker’s behalf. Sombra always found her, just as she did that first day spent burning the bulk of her family’s collected memories. She would wait, of course, offering Widowmaker the berth she sought for a spell before seeking her out.

Widowmaker struggled most then, grasping at what limited resources she possessed to explain herself as they slipped one by one through her fingers. The thought was always there: “I have lost so much”; the means of giving it voice, however, were gone, maddeningly intangible when she needed them most. Luckily, when the sniper found the gap she was otherwise getting so good at crossing suddenly impassible, Sombra cleared it with grace and ease, holding her hand or settling at her side or bringing her cocoa which, despite its ill-devised ratio of water to chocolate, still somehow proved soothing.

“It is funny,” Widowmaker sniffed early one evening, head in the other woman’s lap as she hugged her knees to her chest. Sombra offered no reply but the brush of her thumb against the curve of the spider’s cheek, wiping away the remnants of her tears. “I’m a murderer. You’re, well-“

“A lying, over-confident career criminal?” Sombra chuckled, both self-effacing and proud.

“Inelegant, but-“

“-but?“

“Yes.”

“And?”

“We will always be these things,” the sniper continued, shifting to better address her partner. “I will always kill, and I  _like_  killing. You will always lie, and you like lying. We can be these things - we are these things - and we still have this.”

Sombra raised a single, expectant eyebrow. “Vague, spider.”

“Us,” Widowmaker half-laughed, poking Sombra between the ribs. “Something soft. And I am grateful for it. I am grateful for you.  _Merci, cherie_.”

Their evenings typically vacillated between tender exploration, quiet conversation amid dwindling candlelight, and not infrequent devolution into markedly rougher interplay, the pair of them reduced to base instinct and imprecation snarled against a pillow or tangled sheet. That evening, however, Sombra kissed her as if she never wanted anything more in her life, stopping at the base of the staircase to place her hands gently on either side of the sniper’s face in a silent acknowledgement of that same unique something they were cultivating. It was not the first time she kissed her so, but, somehow, that simple expression of closeness, of acceptance and caring and want always felt more poignant in the wake of Widowmaker’s brief but devastating rendezvous with sorrow. Widowmaker had never wanted those affirmations, had never noticed the negative space they could have otherwise filled; even now, aware of that absence and with the understanding they offered some small solace, she could barely find it within herself to seek them out. That Sombra offered those little comforts readily and willingly, as if doing so were the practical response to a natural stimulus, was as perplexing as it was astounding.

While she was certain she would be better off having never received them, Widowmaker couldn’t say whether “better” was truly that.

Of course, she went years without that validation and likely would again some day - they couldn’t stay at the château forever, and as their time there dwindled she knew their return to the world beyond the mansion’s walls would require either the dissolution of this particular aspect of their relationship or a substantial adjustment on both their parts. She knew the former was the cleaner of those options, especially on paper, but the ruthless pragmatism on which Widowmaker staked her life and reputation felt unappealing and crude when leveled anywhere even remotely near Sombra’s direction. More importantly, she had that kindness now, that spark of sincerity from a person as otherwise insincere as herself.

It felt like a gift, one she was loathe to further consider rejecting.

That night, more than any other, Sombra kissed her with an ardency that made her feelings plain: that Widowmaker was, in that moment, worth more than every lie, every secret, every bit of intel. In every kiss which followed, she reiterated that truth, one no words could express: the only one they knew, rare and invaluable against the web of deceit and death which gave their lives structure. Even their brief partings - when Sombra pressed a long, slow line of kisses trailing downward from the sniper’s shoulder across perfect skin she could almost mistake for warm - her touch lingered, a promise to return.

“I’m grateful for you, too, you know,” she murmured, breath hot against the inside of one thigh as Widowmaker hooked the opposite leg over her shoulder. Sombra didn’t wait for a reply - didn’t need one - and whatever acknowledgement the sniper may have offered was supplanted immediately by the breathless gasp the other woman dragged from her throat as that line of kisses reached its end between her legs.

That evening, Widowmaker considered in the hazy twilight of consciousness the closeness they shared. It was a statistical improbability - a glitch; still, it was there, an ember amid the void despite the programming which dictated its impossibility. It felt like a loophole, a promising breach in protocol that validated long-harbored suspicions dating back to her first, fateful kill: that she was, in a way, a blank slate - not just as dictated by her reconditioning, but with regard to her potential, her ability to build something irrevocably hers from the ashes of cruel tragedy. That understanding didn’t change the events or occupation which governed her life, but it might - might - mean there was more to carve for herself than the empty husks of her past.


End file.
